Pitch Us

Hey y’all —

Like a lot of you, I’m a freelance pop culture writer whose work is frequently under threat because of pivots to video, budget cuts, or benefactors who hastily decide that what they don’t want out of their webspace is a well-written, deftly crafted essay that engages their readers, however long it might be.

I’m tired of that.

I’m also, admittedly, a largely broke person who opened up this webspace because I’ve found it helpful to have for pitches that get rejected, essays that can’t find a home, and so on. I want to open it to you, if you’re interested.

Right now, Fear of a Ghost Planet is in the early stages of rebuilding so that it can better handle an identity that’s not just my webspace. For the time being, I plan on publishing essays three times a week while building social media engagement and exploring crowdfunding options. Publishing here is, admittedly, not going to give you the same coverage or pay as publishing at the AV Club or Splitsider or Paste or Vice, but I genuinely care about smart writing on subjects the author clearly has a passion for, and I won’t treat your work like “content.” We deserve better, frankly.

Here’s what I can offer:

$20 upon publication. It’s what I can afford out of pocket. Through crowdfunding and zine distribution and other means, I plan on growing that, along with expanding the number of posts I’m able to run per week.

A keen editorial eye. I come from a literary magazine background and have worked on several magazines, and was briefly the assistant editor of the wrestling section of Paste. I know what I’m doing, and I hope to make everything I run as good as it can be.

A place to develop your byline and ability to pitch to editors. This, more than anything, seems to stop my friends who would be good at writing from writing. If you want help with this aspect of freelancing, I can provide it.

What I want:

Features. I’m not interested in show recaps or straight reviews. I’m interested in your voice and analysis of whatever it is you’re jamming on right now, what you’ve got beef with, etc.

Pieces on wrestling, comic books, film, video games, television, music — anything that falls under the umbrella of “pop culture,” really. Got an essay about a board game you really like? Light up that e-mail, hoss.

A manageable word count. Largely because I can’t pay you more than $20 for a piece. I trust people to have an attention span long enough to get to the end of a piece, and in the future I’d love to work on long form writing. For now, however, let’s keep it under 3,000 words.